Valpo Faculty Perspectives on Simple Syllabus

By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL

This fall Simple Syllabus debuted university-wide. For our students this means consistent syllabus navigation across all their courses and the ability to easily access their syllabi via Blackboard or SS directly using their device of choice. A print option is also available for students who prefer a paper copy.

For faculty, however, the transition from the syllabi they have used for years to a brand-new format has meant some bumps in the road. In this article your colleagues describe their transition to Simple Syllabus: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Bob Wichlinski thinks that Simple Syllabus is a flexible tool, whereas Danielle Lavin-Loucks finds that it gives her less room for creativity. Lisa Jennings likes how Simple Syllabus provides consistency across Core sections but worries about intellectual property, while Tayler Dove and Ryan Bye find it easier for their GS-100 freshmen to navigate. Please read on to learn more about your colleagues’ reaction to Simple Syllabus.

Bob Wichlinski: Convenience, Compliance, Consistency

Bob Wichlinski (Computing & Info Sciences) is a fan of anything that makes his job easier. He became an early adopter of Simple Syllabus because he thinks it really lives up to its name both for both him and his students.

Above all, he finds SS intuitively navigable so that his students can locate information easily. He sets up his Blackboard courses so that as soon as students enter the course, SS opens up, therefore the first thing students see every time is the syllabus. This is especially important for his many international students, so that they are in no doubt about where to find the syllabus.

Bob believes that any new teaching tool has to meet three criteria: convenience, compliance, consistency. His students find SS convenient because it works well on their phones as well as other platforms. As for compliance, no longer does Bob have to hunt for all the latest updates to university policies such as Title IX or the honor code. All of that now uploads automatically. SS provides consistency for his students; all their class syllabi look and feel the same. So if they can navigate SS in one class, then they can do so in all their classes.

Bob views SS as a flexible tool. If you want to add bells & whistles and get creative with your syllabus, then it can be a swiss army knife. But if you like to keep your syllabus lean and clean, then SS can be as simple as a pen knife.

For him, Simple Syllabus solves many problems simultaneously. For one thing, he no longer has to archive his syllabi or remember to share them with the department administrator for HLC compliance. They are automatically stored in the SS LIbrary.

Secondly, he appreciates having the complete textbook information–including cover photo–for students who wish to order online. He used to get many requests from students for a picture of their textbook so they could order online. Now if a rare student asks, he just pops up the syllabus and shows them the textbook information.

Lisa Jennings: Simple Syllabus and Core

Lisa Jennings (DIrector of Valpo Core) started using Simple Syllabus for the Core template back in the summer of 2022. That first summer, Gina Rue created the Core SS template for her from the word document Lisa had made. Then this past summer Lisa was able to create the template directly on her own with some support from Gina. She definitely advises other faculty to call on the CITAL office for help with SS.

One thing Lisa likes about SS is that she no longer has to keep looking up the various university policies that are required in every syllabus, because they are imported automatically. She also notes that it is easier now to get every Core section set up with the same syllabus structure. She was able to share that common syllabus with more than twenty course sections. Finally, she appreciates how easy it is to make changes to the syllabus. In the past, having already given students a paper copy of the syllabus, she had to create an addendum if, for example, she needed an extra class on a writing assignment. Now she just makes the change directly in SS.

While adopting SS for the whole Core Program was not glitch-free, and questions remain about intellectual property and the cost of the platform, Lisa has been able to use SS to share common syllabus policies easily.

Danielle Lavin-Loucks: Creativity and Simple Syllabus

Danielle Lavin-Loucks (Sociology/Criminology) is someone who likes to jump right in and try out new technology. So she was an early adopter for Simple Syllabus, requesting a sandbox to play around in last spring. She also did two online training sessions and communicated with Gina Rue, Instructional Designer and Simple Syllabus Administrator.

Despite this early start, she could not start her actual SS for classes for fall until three weeks before the semester, when she finally knew for sure what she would be teaching. So she ended up doing a lot of cutting and pasting from previous syllabi. Some things transferred just fine, but her infographics and tables did not. She eventually discovered that she could avoid distortion issues if she saved her infographic as an image before transferring it. She also learned that she could save her table as an image (JPEG or PNG) and then it would transfer just fine.

Over the years Danielle has chosen specific fonts for sections of her syllabi, so she finds the fact that SS only gives you five font choices–not including her favorite, Calabria– to be limiting. On the other hand, It also bothers her that the fonts, type size, and line-spacing for some of the locked sections in SS are not consistent. (Editor’s Note: The CITAL team is hopeful that with the newly designated Simple Syllabus Account Manager for Valpo, we’ll be seeing improvements soon.)

Danielle also has had some issues with SS in her role as chair. She would use the designation “staff” for a course that was not yet assigned. When she later updated Colleague by assigning a faculty member to the class, the SS did not immediately update. She worked with Gina Rue to fix this, but would like to see SS update from Colleague more frequently. She also notes that as chair she can add an instructor but cannot delete the previous instructor herself.*

In addition, for topics courses, SS automatically imports the general description of the course. When the course finally gets a specific topic and instructor, that new description can be added (as a “new component”) but the general description cannot be deleted.

Next semester Danielle plans to use the assignment table provided by SS so that she can make changes in the schedule if needed. Anything she can’t cut and paste she will embed as an image. She will also add things to her SS under “new components” feature. That may allow her to add in more of the things she wants as well as reorder them.

*Editor’s Note: With full rollout of SS this fall, a few “bugs” have been revealed. Colleague and Simple Syllabus exchange data overnight including the instructor information. The CITAL team is working with the IT team so that a newly assigned instructor isn’t just added to the template but replaces the previous instructor.

Tayler Dove and Ryan Bye: Simple Syllabus and Academic Success

“Strategies for Academic Success” (GS-100) is a one-credit learning strategies and study skills course.  Tayler Dove, manager of the Academic Success Center, oversees the GS-100 course. She assisted with the transition of the course to SS last fall and then worked with the CITAL team to make changes to it this fall.  She found the CITAL support extremely helpful in making improvements to the SS template. 

Ryan Bye, one of the GS-100 instructors, has found SS very easy to use and liked that the required sections were already built in. He mentioned that most GS-100 students are new to Valpo, so they took to SS quite well.  They find SS quite easy to navigate now that it is fully integrated into Blackboard. However, Tayler notes that some returning students say they miss the PDF version of the syllabus.**

Tayler’s favorite aspect of SS is that as the manager of the ASC, she can view all of the Valpo syllabi in our SS library. So when she is in a meeting with a student she can pull up their syllabus to see where they might need additional support in Study Strategies tutoring or exam preparation. For helping students to succeed, having instant access to all of their syllabi is a true gift. 

** Editor’s Note: When an instructor publishes a Simple Syllabus, two links are produced: 1) An URL that is web-based for online access, and 2) An URL in PDF format for printing. Both links can be easily accessed and shared with students. Students can also just select “view” or “print”  in SS so they do not have to have the separate link.